News from the LiveCD World
Blogcritics.org goes over repartition a hard drive with the GParted LiveCD.
“Okay, little Percival, let me tell you what partitioning was like in the old days. If you already had information on your hard drive, but wanted to re-partition it, all your data would be erased. There were programs available that would partition your drive without erasing all your stuff, but they cost money.”
Linux by Examples uses the SLAX LiveCD to perform some data recovery and repair on a couple broken Windows machines.
Wired’s Compiler blog has a brief overview of Damn Small Linux.
We’ve written about portable apps quite a number of times in the past, but why bother with just apps when there’s a whole OS that’ll fit on a 50MB USB stick? Damn Small Linux, sometimes abbreviated DSL, is a 50MB mini desktop Linux distribution.
tuxmachines.org reviews the new GoblinX release.
GoblinX developers released their 2007.1 Premium version of GoblinX Linux recently and I was able to obtain the 1-cd version for testing. GoblinX has always been a very interesting project to watch with their odd-looking almost macabre-themed XFCE distro. It’s based on Slackware, so you know they have a good foundation and XFCE is coming into its own. With new versions of GoblinX being released about once per year, it’s hard to pass up the chance to test it when a new one arrives on the scene.
LINUX ON DESKTOP reviews Puppy Linux.
CLICK brings news about a new book all about Damn Small Linux. This will be the first LiveCD book for a distro other than Knoppix, or LiveCDs in general (at least that I know of).
Engadget has links to a LiveCD version of the OS used by the OLPC project.
Puppy Developer News has information on a new version of Puppy Linux created by the Puppy community.
The Puppy 2.15CE (Community Edition) is the result of collaboration of a team of Puppy enthusiasts. It is built upon version 2.14 but with many enhancements. In particular the guys have worked on an improved user-interface and nice out-of-the box first impression. They have also developed some “SFS” files that add OpenOffice, web and graphics applications — SFS files are “combo packs” of applications that can be installed and uninstalled with a few clicks.
CLICK reviews SLAX.
Slax is a live CD that I’ve been very anxious to try. Any distro that claims to be light on hardware — yet features the KDE desktop — is something I’ve got to try. I’m beginning to think KDE gets a bad rap. It runs pretty darn well in this distro, as well as in MepisLite. And I think KOffice is a terrific package, with KWrite being one of the best programs out there for writers.
DistroWatch has the announcement, also check out the official changelog.
The GParted project has released a LiveCD which allows Ghost-like efficient disk and partition imaging over a network.
UnlikePartimage or ntfsclone, which only for partitions. Clonezilla, containing some other programs, can save and restore not only partitions, but also a whole disk.
Unlike G4U or G4L, in Clonezilla, if file system is supported, only used blocks in harddisk are saved and restored. This increase the clone efficiency.
The new Python on Planes rapid development framework comes with a Live CD installer. Cool!
Major highlights in the release include Active Scrum Manager 1, Sanity Preserver 3.13 and Lart 22.21. This is also the first release with the PythonOnPlanes Live CD Installer officially debuting on the x86 platform.
Tuxmachines.org has a howto for putting Knoppix on a USB flash drive and making it bootable.
Of course, it can be even more portable when it runs entirely off of an inexpensive USB key. So let’s install it to a 1 GB USB key, and create a persistent home directory in which to store files. Only let’s do it the lazy way, and keep use of the command prompt to a bare minimum.
Desktop Linux reports on the release of Sabayon Linux 3.3 LiveCDs.
Geeks.com tech-tips has an intro to Linux LiveCDs.
A Live CD is a great way to test out Linux without worrying about what it may do to your computer.
Linux.com takes Dreamlinux 2.2 for a spin.
When it comes to choosing a Linux distribution, people tend to stick with the major players, such as Ubuntu, SUSE, or Fedora. However, every once in a while a distro comes along that offers a look at Linux in a new and fun way. One such distribution is Dreamlinux, a Morphix-based implementation of Linux that can be run from a single CD or installed on a hard drive. Dreamlinux 2.2 aims to offer a full range of desktop applications while providing a wealth of multimedia tools for easy production of professional-grade media.
The Tech Report used a Linux LiveCD to benchmark the latest processors from AMD and Intel.
notfred’s Folding Benchmark CD tests the most common work unit types and estimates performance in terms of the points per day that a CPU could earn for a Folding team member. The CD itself is a bootable ISO. The CD boots into Linux, detects the system’s processors and Ethernet adapters, picks up an IP address, and downloads the latest versions of the Folding execution cores from Stanford. It then processes a sample work unit of each type.
Debian/Ubuntu Tips & Tricks has step by step instructions for copying an Ubuntu LiveCD to a USB flash drive. In the end you get a bootable flash drive, which can be used for installing Ubuntu on a computer without a CD drive, or getting the LiveCD experience with something you can fit in your pocket.
OSWeekly takes a look at some kiosk LiveCDs.
TriedIT takes the Sabayon Linux 3.3 LiveDVD for a spin.
Sabayon Linux aims to give users all the bleeding edge software of SimplyMEPIS and PCLinuxOS but is based on Gentoo and uses Portage as its package management system. I haven’t used Gentoo for a couple of years now, but Sabayon’s popularity is continually increasing and with a new release it’s now time to give it a try.